


The Strength in Being a Bridge

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [52]
Category: Exposed (2016)
Genre: Acceptance, Anal Sex, Artists, BBW, Broken Families, Chair Sex, Children, Cunnilingus, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Estrangement, F/M, Facials, Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Family Issues, Family Reunions, Family Secrets, Father's Day, Father-Son Relationship, For Adults Only, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Healing Sex, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Loss of Virginity, Love, Love Stories, Mental Health Issues, Moving In Together, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Oral Sex, Overweight, Penis In Vagina Sex, Police, Purifying, Rain, Reunions, Rough Sex, School, Secrets, Self-Hatred, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Serious, Storms, Teachers, Thunder and Lightning, Vacation, Virginity, bridges, storm sex, widower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:20:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24832261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: Sent to live with his aunt after the death of his mother, Anthony Galban is estranged from his father New York City Police Detective Scott Galban. Fond of Anthony, I decide to visit Detective Galban when I go to New York on my vacation to try to find out why he will not even visit his son.Once there Scott invites me to stay with him, a courtesy he remains reluctant to offer to his son. As the Detective and I grow closer, I sense a darkness in the man, whom hints that his dead wife served a certain role for him that Anthony remained oblivious to in his childhood innocence.One stormy night, Scott Galban shows to me fully the dark secret relationship which existed between him and Anthony's mother and why he feels that the bridge has been forever burned between his son and himself.*The implied references of childhood sexual abuse and rape involve the character of Isabel de La Cruz and the events from "Exposed." They do not pertain to the events in this story.
Relationships: Anthony Galban & Me, Detective Scott Galaban & Detective Joey Cullen, Detective Scott Galban & Anthony Galban, Detective Scott Galban & Isabel de La Cruz, Detective Scott Galban/Janine Cullen, Detective Scott Galban/Me
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [52]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Kudos: 1





	The Strength in Being a Bridge

**Author's Note:**

> The 2nd Father's Day special...
> 
> I'm confused when people say that Exposed significantly edited the ethnic characters. I watched it expecting this but didn't see it quite that way. I mean, it spent a fair bit of time on the various ethnic characters, including Isabel's brother-in-law washing a dog and it getting run over. How is that not devoting time to that aspect? I watched it not realizing I was supposed to manually put the subtitles on for the scenes featuring the foreign language. There were plenty of those and it was done well enough that even without the subs I knew what was going on. I also read the deleted scenes and am glad they were deleted. The film was far too depressing as it was already. Seeing Isabel tormented more would have been just more agony. Pan's Labyrinth and Fire Walk With Me are far better mixtures of violent reality and hopeful fantasy.
> 
> It already had a major problem, in my opinion, when they had Isabel be sexually victimized twice. This divided the focus right there. That was my major problem.
> 
> And if Keanu Reeves' character was never meant to be important why the heck film those scenes anyway? I wanted to find out WHY he didn't want to see his son but that was never answered. I thought KR did well in it. He was properly sad and beaten. What else was he supposed to do?
> 
> Sigh. Anyway, this fic tries to deal with that unanswered question regarding the deal with Galban and his son.
> 
> And my thoughts are still with you, Keanu as per my other note on the Parenthood fic. *hug*

Anthony Galban's mother had died months ago from cancer and the woman he stayed with now was not really his mother but his aunt. I was informed by his regular teacher that his father was a police Detective up in New York City.

"Why'd he send Tony here to Florida?" I asked Mrs. Tuttle in curiousity one day weeks after learning of my favorite art student's home situation.

A short, feisty woman with thick red glasses and black hair cut into the shape of a bowl with bangs, Tuttle merely shrugged. "Nobody understands. He needs time grieving? All I know is that his son misses him desperately and wants to go home. The bastard keeps promising him he's going to visit but he never does. If I had the time and half the mind to, I'd march right up there to the Big Crapple and drag his sorry ass here."

Knowing that I was going to New York soon on a vacation I had planned ages ago, I kept my mouth shut as the seed of an idea fell into the soil of my brain and started to sprout instant roots. I guess, all of the shit which my mind was usually filled with helped in serving it to grow better.

* * *

Anthony was a special kid. You can tell those right away. I don't mean to suggest that some children _aren't_ special but some just stand up at you more. Having taught art for several years, and maybe just a conceit being an artist myself, but Anthony showed genuine talent in his work. But not only that, Anthony Galban was just a _sweetheart_ of a kid. He was quiet, polite and kind. If somebody needed more paint he'd rush to get it for them or would let them borrow his own. Even if his other classmate would dip a brush with black paint in his white one, turning it gray, he never complained. Tony, as I liked to call him, was also the only one in the class whom volunteered to clean the brushes at the end of a lesson. I came to love him but his home situation worried me especially why his drawings usually involved him and his father when his father was nowhere around. I wasn't worried about abuse of any kind. Tony loved his father and wanted to go back to living with him, something rarely found in cases of abuse. What bothered me was the fact that a man could so easily abandon such a sweet boy whom honestly adored him. I intended to find out why and in person for myself instead of relying on the gossip of other people whom could only vainly speculate.

"I'm going to New York soon," I told Anthony one day when he was returning the cleaned paintbrushes. "Do you want me to go see your father while I'm there?"

"Would you Miss Smyth?" Tony asked, almost dropping the brushes.

I nodded and smiled. "I just need to know where he lives."

The boy gave the address to me and I hastily wrote it down on a piece of blue colored sketch paper. "Same place we lived with my mom," Tony commented.  
His voice sounded so sad and mournful, my heart went out for him. Having lost one parent already he shouldn't need to lose another, I thought to myself.

"Do me a favor, though, okay Tony?" I asked.

"Sure."

"Don't tell anybody I'm going to go see him."

I wasn't exactly sure that it would be looked on sympathetically if I went to see Detective Scott Galban on my own. I was only the art teacher for his son while the boy was in Florida. Tuttle could make all the jokes she wanted to but I only saw Tony Galban once a week. It might look...

Odd.

A little too nosy or too concerned.

My own loneliness might be called into question and I might be accused of interfering in matters that were not my business when I should be taking care of my own messed up life or lack thereof. If they looked too deeply they might discover that I used to, and still did sometimes, cut myself to deal with my emotional pain But I wanted to help the two men. That was all. Because if I had fallen in love with Tony as the son I probably would never have, I wanted to understand how his own father could not feel the same.

* * *

Packing up my bags, I headed to New York more than a little nervous. Stuffed into the corner of my luggage, almost guiltily, and hidden inside of a flap was the address for Detective Scott Galban. I'd Googled the address beforehand just so I would know what the house looked like. It was perfectly normal. Two stories tall, brown and red brick, white picket fence surrounded by trees. The house you would expect a well looked upon police officer, his loving and beautiful wife and their young son to live in before the tragedy which had torn them all so cruelly apart. Except I still could not understand why Galban had torn himself away from his only child. Was it an Archibald Craven deal from "The Secret Garden?" Was he afraid that his son would remind him too painfully of the woman he had loved and lost? Barring some sort of abuse, that was the only thing I could think of.

Watching the scenery on the bus ride from Florida to New York, I couldn't stop thinking about how I felt as if I was doing something wrong. It wasn't a new feeling. Having Obssessive Compulsive Disorder, guilt and I were well acquainted. But whereas I usually hadn't done the wrong thing when a OCD alarm normally went off, now I knew that I was in the process of doing something potentially foolish or even dangerous. I had already planned on going to New York; that much was true. But what had sealed the deal, and was now consuming almost every single thought I had, was of meeting Tony's father. It was probably my own loneliness but he had started to take over my mind, constantly wondering what he was like. I began to become obsessed without ever having seen a single photograph of him and with only knowing his name, his profession, the fact that he had lost his wife and his address, which was hidden away like it was a sin and my suitcase the soul which was harboring it.

I risked looking odd if what I planned on doing was discovered. I could even possibly lose my job, my peers and the neighborhood claiming I had formed an unhealthy obsession with a student's father.  
But I _had_ to meet Scott Galban and somehow get him to see his little boy again.

My trip to New York would be a waste if I didn't.

* * *

On the first day of my vacation in the Big Apple, I set about unpacking my suitcase and then seeing some sights. I took a lot of photographs on that day, visited many of the tourist attractions. I knew it would aid me if I became too preoccuppied or despondent later. Preoccupied with trying to move Scott Galban enough for him to be willing to see his son again. Despondent incase my whole ill conceived mission failed. Now, at least, I had photographs to prove that I'd seen and enjoyed a bit of the City.

I returned to my room at the end of the day extremely tired. I phoned up room service and spent far too much on a burger and fries but felt much better after the comfort food. That night, as I fell asleep, I was once more convinced I had done the right thing by coming there. Having traveled over the Brooklyn Bridge, I saw myself as a similar structure. On one end of me was poor Anthony Galban, grieving for his mother and hopelessly missing his father; on the other stood Detective Scott Galban, also mourning for the loss of his wife and also, for some reason, pushing the son he had created with her far away from him. I hoped to be the bridge which would finally unite them. Bringing them, if not closer together, at least within touching distance of each other.

* * *

I walked up to the front door of the Galban house with my high hopes from the night before less enthusiastic. Life was often like that for me dealing with my OCD and depression. I'd go to bed hopeful one night but sleep had a way of cruelly wiping away anything good that I had achieved the previous day. I often awoke with the same insecurities and worries back ten fold. It was as if my mental illness was an actual thinking adversary which took advantage of the fact that I was sleeping and thereby vulnerable to lay seige on again. The obsessive unwanted thoughts I believed I had conquered returned with a vengeance making things seem hopeless. As I stood on Scott Galban's front porch, whose paint had started to chip off from since the image on Google Maps had been taken, waiting to see if anybody actually answered the door, things certainly were not hopeless but they weren't as bright as they had first seemed either. The mood inside of me was like the weather: plenty of clouds but no actual rain as of yet.  
And rain itself could either be healing or destructive, bringing flowers and crops or bringing with it floods which drowned both.

About a minute and a half after I first knocked on the door, I saw the figure of a man like a dark shadow on the other side of the door. My heart started to pound inside of me as the door opened.

"Detective Scott Galban?" I asked as I stared into a pair of eyes so dark and devoid of joy their possessor might as well have been dead or somewhere close to it.

"Yeah," the man answered in a rough and deep voice. "I'm him."

I took in the sight of the man fully now knowing he was the person I had hoped to find. He was tall and strongly built. His skin had a toughness to it and his hair was short and dark. Lines were etched to his face and made deep by sadness. And here I was standing at his door, possibly bringing to him even more.

"I'm Erin Smyth," I introduced myself. "I teach your son Anthony's art classes."

A small smile played on the man's lips when he heard his son's name and a flicker of recognition at my name too, leading me to guess Galban's words before he even formed them.

"Yes," he stated. "Anthony mentioned you."

I saw him studying me more closely now that he knew I wasn't canvassing for a charity or about to try to sell him something. He had looked interested before but now he was aware that I might occupy his life for more than a few knocks on the door and that his son had mentioned me even, he now processed my appearance more. I felt terribly shy in that instant. Had Tony mentioned I was overweight? Did the man think less of me because of it? Did he think me prettier or less attractive than what he had imagined? He was more attractive than I had thought but I could find few answers contained in Scott Galban's dark eyes.

When he raised them finally from off of my black jeans, he looked a little more worried as another possibility, an unwanted one, came to him. "Is Anthony all right? You aren't here because anything happened?"

Guilt flooded over me again as I cursed myself for not realizing that, of course, this would be his first natural thought.

"No, no," I answered. "My vacation came up and since I was coming here anyway, I thought I'd call on my favorite students father. Anthony is always mentioning you."

"So he's your favorite, huh?" he said with a small proud smile.

"Yes," I replied. "He's such a sweet boy. And his work shows real promise."

"Yeah he made me a great card for my Birthday," Galban's pride remained and I watched as he suddenly became conscious of the fact that we were standing on the porch talking for all of his neighbours to see.

"Come in," he offered.

I smiled and did.

* * *

I told Scott (he wanted me to stop calling him Mr. Galban about three minutes into our conversation) about how well Anthony was doing. Whenever Scott referenced his son it was always Anthony and I soon found myself using it more often than Tony so I wouldn't have to see the confusion in the man's eyes anytime I used the abbreviation.

Sitting across from the Detective at long wooden table, I suddenly felt like approaching the subject which had brought me to his doorstep. "Scott...your son misses you very much. Is there any real reason why you won't let him come home? Or, at least, go and see him?"

"So you're _really_ here as a social worker not a teacher?" he stated, far less friendly than when I had been telling him about his son continually offering to clean paintbrushes.

"No," I replied. "I'm here as a woman who cares about your son and as a human being that just wants to understand and help if she can, in any way."

"In any way?" he repeated.

Scott Galban was staring at me. Although he was staring at my face, I suddenly became aware of my chest and each breath I was taking. Something told me that his eyes really wanted to go to it instead but I told myself I was just being crazy.

"You're sweet," he commented unexpectedly.

"I...I...thank you," I stated, not sure what else to say.

"Sarah was sweet too," he remarked.

"Sarah?" I asked confused.

"My wife," Scott explained. "I guess, Anthony never mentions her by name?"

"No," I shook my head.

"That's right," Galban said more to himself than to me. "Funny how to a child it is usually ' _mom_ ' or ' _dad_ '...to Anthony she was mother, mom, mommy. To me she was Sarah, love, darling... She was different people to us both. The same house but different roles. She was the bridge between Anthony and myself."

I shivered after he had said that; it was as if he had read my mind from the previous night. He caught my movement looked as if he was about to comment on it and then stopped. "Where are you staying, Erin?"  
Giving him the name of my hotel, he continued to stare at me with his dark and piercing eyes. "You should stay here," he suggested.

"You'd let me?"

He nodded. "I'm hardly ever here. It's a miracle you even caught me. You'd save a lot of money. I know what teachers make."

I looked at him questioningly.

"Sarah was a teacher," he explained.

"Funny. Anthony didn't mention it."

He smiled wryly. "Once again, people are different to their children than they are to other adults. They're kind of oblivious to a lot of things. The worlds of adults and children are usually two separate things. Or, at least, they should be."

I was quiet as I contemplated this and the truth of it. Currently the papers were filled with the story of a young woman named Isabel de La Cruz whom had killed the man who had raped her and then envisioned angels and an immaculate conception to help shield herself from the truth. She killed her own father a few weeks later. Turns out he had molested her when she had been a very small child. Probably where the pain had all started from. Children were meant to be children; Adults were meant to be adults. It was one of the greatest sins under God's sky when an adult forcefully pulled a child into that realm.

"So how about it?" Scott asked, breaking me out of my reverie.

"Yes," I answered, hoping if I stayed I might be able to convince the man to see his son.

"Fine," he replied. "Come back tonight at eight. I was about to head to the station before you came but I'll be back by tonight."

"That would be great," I commented. "Thank you."

Scott Galban said nothing back but only continued to gaze at me with his sad eyes.

* * *

I was back at eight and set up in the spare room which was next to Anthony's. The room Scott shared with Sarah was on the first floor and I briefly thought it strange that their bedroom was so far away from their son's. Then again, with Galban's work he might have preferred not having to repeatedly climb stairs. When I showed up with such a small suitcase, he eyed it in diluted shock. "That all you brought with you?"

"I have OCD," I confessed. "The less I travel with the less I worry about leaving behind when I go back."

He laughed. "Smart idea."

I smiled back at him and we gazed at each other until we both suddenly became awkward. "You care to eat with me?" he asked. "It's kind of late but..."

"Sure," I said.

"Good. I'll order a pizza. Sarah was the cook, not me."

We sat eating a large pepperoni pizza which was very good. Scott washed it down with a beer while I had a soda. Occassionally he looked at me in a certain way that made me feel uncomfortable. I couldn't explain it. It wasn't overtly leering but there was something that felt somehow physically charged to it as if he were sizing me up for some intimate role in his life, lover, one night stand, fuck buddy...What made me all the more self conscious was how I wanted to respond to it. That I felt the chance of arousal looming around like a dark cloud threatening rain.

"I prefer this," Scott said even though we had been eating in silence. "I'd been eating over at my ex partner's house for a while after his death. He left behind a wife and two kids. Anthony used to spend time with them after Sarah died."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said genuinely.

He smiled sardonically. "Don't be _too_ sorry. He was Detective Joey Cullen."

"Oh," I said. I instantly recognized the name as belonging to the same man who had raped that poor girl in the subway.

"Yeah," Galban said. " _Oh_."

He took a swig from the bottle after a humourless laugh.

Talk was stilted after that but Scott seemed genuinely sorry if he had upset me. Before turning in for the night, he looked at me with kindness and said. "Thanks for staying with me. I get lonely sometimes without Sarah."

I reached across the table and placed my hand over his. "No problem Scott. I get lonely too and I never had anyone to begin with."

"So is Anthony really your favorite?" he asked in proud disbelief.

I nodded.

Going to sleep that night, I thought it strange that Scott Galban had easily invited me into his home but would not invite his son to return back to it also.

* * *

The Detective came and went at odd hours but he seemed to seek out my company whenever he came back. He seemed very anxious sometimes upon returning although he never mentioned why. When it was late at night he wouldn't even look at me or say one word. He just walked straight to his bedroom and shut the door. Daytime was better. It was almost as if he were two different people. I'd get to thinking about his musings then that a person, a mother or father, was two separate things to a child and an adult.

I walked into Anthony's room once and saw some traces of his relationship with his mother here and there. He obviously loved her. In the photographs she looked like the quintessential mom, all smiles, hugs and kisses. Scott was in the photos too. He appeared to be the perfect dad but I noticed Sarah Galban was usually placed between them; like visual proof of the bridge he claimed that she had been.

"Can't Anthony come home soon?" I asked Scott one night as we watched an old I Love Lucy dvd I had found on the shelf.

"No," was all that Scott replied as he stared vacantly at Lucy, Ricky and his namesake.

* * *

"The last time I slept with someone it was Joey's wife," Scott told me once out of the blue while we shared a lasagna he'd brought home. He was in a half and half mood. Sad but irritable. "It was my Birthday. She tried to act seductive...it didn't work. I ended up fucking her more out of pity than out of attraction. But I didn't feel clean after it. She made me feel _worse_."

He smirked as he took a drink out of his beer and saw my wide eyes. "Now you...I would have been attracted to you. I would have slept with you and not have regretted it."

"Any particular reason you're telling me this?" I asked, ignoring the fact that I would have let him fuck me on his Birthday if he had wanted.

"Because you're sweet and innocent, just like Sarah," he stated, putting his beer bottle down. "Confession is good for the soul. I'd tell her about all of the shit I'd see at work and she...she was so good, so innocent she'd listen and make it all clean. Then I could go to work the next day and do it all over again."

Tears formed in his eyes, bringing life to them and I rushed instinctively towards him. Kneeling by his chair, I took his head in my hands. Our lips were so close they brushed against each other until they were suddenly locked in a full kiss. Scott suddenly grabbed my shoulders and pushed me away. He looked defeated and all I wanted was for him to kiss me again and take me further than I had ever been before. Instead he took my arm and looked at the scars on it, the ones I usually tried to hide. "You hurt yourself sometimes, don't you?"

"Yes," I replied, close to tears.

"Sarah did too," he whispered and seemed to take a minute to think something through.

"You came here to see why I can't stand to be around Anthony anymore," Scott said. "That's the real reason right?"

He touched my bottom lip, letting his finger linger there as I nodded my head.

"Tomorrow I work the late shift," he stated. "You wait for me in the living room, in the middle chair, in your nightshirt. That pretty, short, purple one I've seen you in once or twice. Sit in the dark and wait for me. It's what Sarah used to do."

There was some other darkness in his eyes, mingled with sorrow and guilt. I wanted to say no or to at least tell him that I was a virgin. But that other part of me, the part of me which longed to be a separate entity to him than I was to his son, was stronger.

"Yes," it made me whisper and long for the strike of midnight the following night.

* * *

It was raining out. Rain and thunder making the room seem even darker except for those moments when a flash of lightning lit the room up completely. I sat in the chair in the middle of the room as he stated, counting the time with my heartbeats. When the door opened and Scott Galban walked in both seemed to stop. I saw his silhouette in the doorway and how the whites I could see of his eyes rested on me immediately. A flash of light revealed that he was half soaked. Half soaked and very angry. I watched as he let his trenchcoat fall to the floor as he stood there, staring at me in the dark room as the rain fell outside without mercy.

"I'd come home on a night like tonight," he stated. "Sarah would be waiting for me in that chair, just like you are and Anthony would be safely tucked away in his room on the second floor which might as well have been a million miles away. He'd be dreaming hopefully of _innocent_ things like video games or baseball cards...nothing of what adults do to each other late at night."

I felt scared then at his words and the way he was spitting them at me like venom. Still, I remained seated because they excited me in a strange way too.

The Detective walked towards me, slowly pulling off his tie. "And I'd walk in feeling like the dirt I'd spent the night being surrounded by...all of the killers and the rapists, the muggers and thieves, the child molesters and the liars..."

Scott knelt down, the rage he was suffering coming off of him in waves which felt almost hot. He placed a hand on each of my knees and then forcefully spread my legs apart. I felt myself becoming aroused from the act even past the terror I knew I should be feeling. His hands crept up my nightshirt and he grabbed the crotch of my underwear. The sound of fabric tearing was audible past the sound of the distant crack of thunder. "Sometimes she wore those but most often not. She knew what I needed and that I needed it _quickly_."

I gasped as Scott Galban violently thrusted his head between my legs and began to taste me. There was little gentleness in his motion. His head was painfully pushed into my crotch with the violence of a blow. When his tongue dipped into my crevice it was with a hunger which belied any belief that what he was doing was in any way for my pleasure. He wanted my cunt, my clit, the taste of my cream oozing out. Still his actions, bereft of compassion managed to excite me. I shifted in the chair, spreading my legs even further and grabbing the short hair on Galban's head as my own was thrown back. The sound of rain was joined by my plaintive moans. Scott's tongue was violently pressing into my hole, going in and out, following his lips being wrapped around my clit and having given it a bite.

"Unhhhh," I cried as his strong hands grabbed my fat ass and used this to push his tongue even deeper inside. "No...no...no," I was crying.

Scott suddenly removed his head from my crotch and in the next burst of lightening I saw that his skin was glistening. "You want me to stop?" he asked, squeezing each of my buttocks in his equally big hands.

"No," I whispered. "I just...I just..."

His head instantly returned to its former place between my legs. He bit the skin on my thighs, my vulva, my labia as if punishing me for having dared to think that I was going to deny him the taste of me. He returned to using his tongue and I was screaming loudly as I came, grabbing his head again as my body furiously spasmed.

I was panting and still crying as Scott Galban pulled me out of the chair and pushed me on to the floor, allowing me no time for a fabled afterglow. He placed his body onto mine from behind, ripping off the rest of my underwear and hitching my nightclothes up so my bare ass was pressed into the front of his trousers, feeling his monstrous erection against it. His hands started to angrily grab my back cheeks and once again it should not have felt as good as it did. While his right hand was clutching my right buttocks, Scott's left hand sneaked around to my front and started to play with my clit, urging it back to life.

"After I had tasted her, pouring some of the violence and degradation I had been forced to endure all fucking day into her pure and beautiful vessel, I felt a little bit better. But there was still so much inside of me, inside of my thoughts, dirty, filthy voices demanding I still give my attention to them even though my shift had ended and I was back home. But how do you get rid of it, Erin? How do you get rid of it all after you have been _exposed_ to it for so long? It seeps in and stays until you find a fucking way to release it."

I had a suspicion of how Scott Galban had found the way to inside of his mind. I could have yelled no and I knew that he would have listened to me and left me alone.

But I did not want him to.

I heard the sound of a zipper and felt something pressing into my anus. All the while, Scott was teasing my clitoris, keeping me focused in part on my pleasure as he was causing me simultaneous pain by sticking his engorged cock up my less than weilding asshole. When I started to whimper, he understood that I was in pain. While in no way taking it easy on me, my lover increased the pleasure he was giving, knowing just what to do with my quickly responding bud. The pain at the back of me as Scott's member was entering my rectum was bringing its own odd pleasure and I was starting to move now with his own movements also. I was bumping my bottom backwards which seemed to immensely please the enraged Detective. We were grunting, thrusting, grinding and writhing on the floor. Scott Galban was in no way making what could be considered love to me. He was seeking to pour all of the hate he had witnessed in the world, a hate which had tainted him he felt, into a person he deemed as innocent.

He was making me come again but he, himself, hadn't yet. Infact he pulled out of me without ejaculating and I was left wondering what he would do next in order to cleanse himself. Holding me by my shoulders, he roughly pulled me upwards into a sitting position. He knelt before me, his cock looking as angry as when its owner had first walked through the door after his work shift had reached its end. It was covered in both his precome and what it had picked up from being so deeply up my anus. He started to jerk himself off in front of my face as I sat there on my sore and bleeding ass. He was muffling his cries as he brought himself close to climax, an act I instinctively knew not to help him with for this was what he believed had to be performed by himself alone for he was the tarnished one in his mind not me ,

"Then with all of that in my face for about ten hours, Sarah...Sarah would let me unleash it onto her...hers," Scott Galban stuttered and I could see past the wrath in his eyes, which glinted in the dark room but once more were lighted as well by a bolt of God's own electricity, that he was close to shedding the pain he was suffering. Looking at the penis' glistening tip, I wanted the man to let go of his anger, the hurt, rage and frustration. He had sacrificed himself to a profession in the belief that he could help in some small way and could actually make a difference; only to find that every day was more or less the same as the last and nothing truly seemed to ever get any better.

"Hit me," he ordered suddenly when the flow of precome had become a small stream .

"No," I protested.

"HIT ME! PUNISH ME! MAKE ME CLEAN!" he spat at me.

I knew that Sarah Galban had performed this action routinely in the ritual she committed with her tormented husband without needing it to be demanded of her. Otherwise Anthony would have heard the shouts of Scott Galban and their secret shame would have been discovered.

My hand flew out and met the side of Galban's face, fisted but in no way enough to seriously wound him even if that was what he truly wanted.

Scott Galban resisted crying out as he unleashed his seed in a violent fury all over my face, imagining still that his young son was sleeping in the bed upstairs. As his semen and sperm hit my face, I finally knew what a canvas felt like everytime it met with the paint from the can of an artist whom delt in abstraction.

The man gasped for air as if he was being born for a second time, a Scott Galban who was now free from the horrors he encountered every day.  
This was what Galban and his wife had done every night when the Detective had come home from a particularly long and harrowing shift, I now understood. This was how Sarah Galban had helped to take her husband's grief and sin away: by letting him offer it to her instead; their own secret ritual hidden away from the son they both loved because he was a child, after all, and saw them only as his Mother and Father, not husband and wife, not man and woman, human being and human being. And in his poor and broken mind, Scott had seen his wife as being so full of love and purity he had believed she could take it all without becoming tainted herself. And she had. Until she had died and left him to carry his sin and rage all alone.

Crying Scott fell into my arms and I held him, stroking his hair and gently kissing the side of his face. We stayed like that until the thunder had passed and Scott began to gently kiss the side of my face too.

Then I knew that the time had finally come for him to make love to me.

I started to undress him, the thunder gone but the rain still remaining. My fingers unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off alongside the undershirt underneath. Kissing his chest and working my way down, I began to remove his shoes, his pants and underwear even though his cock was still sticking out from both. He helped me but looked shocked when once he was completely naked I took his semihard penis in my hand and brought the still dirty organ to my mouth.

"No, don't," he protested, knowing where it had been.

I knew that too but right then I intended to show him that his ritual had worked and he was now clean. I licked the shaft and then began to pump it as I adored its leaking tip. Precome was falling out. I had the feeling that knowing that I was trying to help him, that I was showing him compassion and love, was arousing the man more than my inexperienced touch was. Not that that was insignificant. I heard the man moan in a deep way which fully confessed his pleasure.

He gently pushed my head from his cock and I knew that he chose my cunt, already wet and twitching, for his second coming. I was moving into position when Scott pulled my nightshirt off of me. I held my breasts against my arms and started to weep, not wanting him to see my large but imperfect chest. Gently, but with strength, he pulled the shield away, smiled at me warmly and began to kiss my breasts, suckling on each nipple. I fell backwards onto the rug in ecstacy, my clit throbbing blissfully from the feel of his lips and tongue. I spread my legs without even knowing I had and Scott soon was between them and inside of me as I was still wriggling beneath him. The phallus tore into me, stealing my virginity. The occassion was marked with a searing moment of pain but after that my body seemed to re-adjust to the swollen and foreign member inside of it and welcomed that part of Scott Galban with joy.

Scott's movements now lacked the anger of our bodies first two joinings. That intimidating quality remained, however; that strongness and masculinity I had dreamed of in a lover. He was taking me as a man sexually claimed a woman but one whom respected her femininity and fragility. His thrusts were not violent but they were steady and confident while his touch was loving and giving. I felt his lips wrapped around one of my erect nipples, his tongue licking the length inside his mouth while his finger caressed the teat on my other breasts.  
I cooed like a dove under him, crying, moaning, gasping from breaths after realizing for long moments I had forgotten to breathe at all. Up and down I felt the erection inside of me moving while I watched Scott's ass moving in similar fashion.

"Please," I begged as I had suffered the pressure building for what felt like eternity and I desired nothing more than climax and release, never having realized that an extended period of pleasure could bring with it its own pain. "PLEASE!"

Scott Galban gave me what I wanted, increasing the power of his pushes until my vagina was violently squeezing every last drop of his seed out from his cock which in its own act of violence had started to spasm while my cunt so pleasingly coaxed it to let go of its offering. Scott collapsed on top of me, kissing the skin on my breasts once more. I stroked his hair again and we lay on the floor together taking our peace from the nearness of one another and the sound of the now thunderless rain outside.

"We did that together, Sarah and I, after Anthony was born. By that time all of my belief in the hope for man had almost been completely stripped away. Human beings were all selfish, mostly bad in their hearts, _perverted_. Except for my Sarah. But seeing Anthony...he was so innocent. Too innocent for me to feel like I could safely be around him without tarnishing him with the work I brought home with me. So Sarah offered to be my bridge...to make me clean so that I could sit at the table and have breakfast with him every morning and feel like I _deserved_ to be there."

I kissed the top of his head and ran my fingers through his now dried hair while I cradled his head.

"But...my dirt...my sin...it must have been too much for her. She developed cancer...it was my evil...She died because of what I did to her. I burned my bridge. I can't ever hope to be around my son again."

"I will be your bridge," I offered. "I love you, Scott."

Scott Galban looked up at me from the makeshift pillows he had made of my breasts. "No. You're sweet, Erin. I'll burn you too."

"You didn't burn Sarah, Scott," I told him. "That's about as real of a thought as that girl on trial thinking her boyfriend got her pregnant, when he was half a world away. And that she was seeing angels when all she had been was raped by a very sick man. Bad things happen. Sarah just died of cancer. My mother died of cancer too. It just happens. It's not even God's fault. Just accidents. That's all it is."

He started to touch my bottom lip. "I think I'm in love with you," he whispered. "When I saw you standing at my front door...I almost believed Isabel was right...that you were an angel."

"I'm not that good Scott," I whispered, tears falling from my eyes as a human reflection of the rain falling from the sky outside. "But I would happily be your bridge, if you let me."

Scott Galban sat up and held me in his arms. "Please," he pleaded. "I want to see my boy again."

* * *

When I went back to Florida it was to bring Anthony Galban back home and to the father who loved him very much. The boy was delighted that I was personally bringing him to New York. I thought that Scott should be the one to tell his son that I would be staying with them. While I couldn't tell Tony, though, I needed to inform the school that I would soon be leaving my post there. It was June and all of the major assignments were already completed. I received some odd glances from my fellow teachers but I tried to ignore them and think of Scott Galban's sad eyes and how they had looked happier after I had agreed to become his bridge.

We arrived back in New York City on Father's Day, which was appropriately fitting. I watched from a few feet away, as Tony ran into Scott's arm, the man already out waiting on the porch for our arrival.

"Hey kid," Scott said ruffling his offspring's hair after a heartfelt embrace. "Erin is going to be staying with us. Is that all right with you?"

" _Erin_?" the younger Galban male repeated, confused.

"Miss Smyth," Scott said with a smile, obviously reminded once more of the divide between the world of children and adults and the various roles that they fulfilled for the other.

When Tony looked at me he saw only his favorite teacher not a flesh and blood woman named Erin.

"That would be awesome!" Anthony said. "She's really nice."

"Yes," Scott said, staring at me with love and seeing me not as a teacher but rather as a lover and his bridge. "Gotta agree with you there."

I took Sarah's place willingly in the Galbans' life and eagerly performed Scott's ritual cleansing for him, when having witnessed the sins of others and committing his own along the way, became too much for him. The night that Isabel de La Cruz was sentenced for the murder of both Detective Joey Cullen and her father, and subsequently committed to a mental institution for several years, found me taking my lover's anger and replacing it with my love instead.

I knew that there were people who would get quite angry at the situation I had fallen into. They would say that what I allowed Scott to do to me was humiliating and degrading...that I made myself weak. That I had embraced the pain that made me cut myself and that I had become a perpetual victim.

I did not see it that way at all.

I saw it simply as Sarah must have when she accepted her husband's sorrow and rage into herself so that he could survive. She must have known the truth whenever she looked at the husband she loved and also at the son whom also owned her heart: only the strongest people on God's Earth let themselves become a bridge. You _have_ to be strong. Weakness is not an option when you are depended on to carry and bring the intended people to the places that they truly _need_ to be.

Like a father being with his son.

And a son being with his father.

When I look at Anthony I see that same strength in his nature too.

He was the bridge that brought me to Scott Galban, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> This was part inspired by tales of sin eaters, those whom took the sins of the people into themselves.
> 
> This story also part inflected the idea of the act of money changing in Jerusalem. For God's people to purchase the sacrifices intended for Him with coins that declared the Roman rulers gods was offensive. Their currency needed to be changed into one which was not blasphemous. Unfortunately the changes extorted the people, charging too high of fees. Hence another reason for Jesus' anger at them turning his father's house into one of profit, exploiting and causing people pain in the process.
> 
> Jesus was/is the ultimate sin eater. He is also a bridge, himself; taking the believer to God, allowing himself to be abused in order to carry us there. Even all these many years after his crucifixion.
> 
> I've just gotta say this because I am happy about it...
> 
> This series now has 52 different stories, featuring 40 Keanu Reeves characters and is over 400 000 words, written in just 9 months! Yes, I am really this pathetic and don't have much of a life! Yay again!:D <3
> 
> Oh, and happy Father's Day, God! ;D <3


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